Anybody tried this?  At a price of $49 this almost seems to be too good to be true.  I'm gonna download the demo and give it a try but if anybody has any first hand experience I'd be grateful to hear it.  I know the bundled plugins are a bit limited but that's not so much of an issue.

Yep, it's good for some things, but I wouldn't say it's what you'd want to use for everything. It's great for mixing in an analog kind of way.

OK, thanks.  I'm gonna give the demo a download.  I may well take advantage whilst the price is low, and I can always buy Reaper later if need be seeing as it's the same price all the time.

I'm still faster with Sonar, but I'm doing new projects in Mixbus.

I've just thought, the way I look at it, if SONAR does stop working and I don't like the recording aspect of Mixbus, I can always record using the free version of Studio One and mix in Mixbus.  Plus there are free versions of Tracktion available as well.
 
There's always an alternative.

I just started working with it. It is heavily focused on audio. As Harrison puts it themselves, the idea behind Mixbus is to replicate mixing on a Harrison analog console.

If you are doing EDM or composing virtual symphonies with tons of soft synths or loops, it probably isn't for you.

If you need heavy-duty audio editing with lots of time and/ or pitch correction, it probably isn't for you.

If you are mixing already recorded and edited tracks or recording live instruments by people who can actually play, it is fantastic.

bdickens
I just started working with it. It is heavily focused on audio. As Harrison puts it themselves, the idea behind Mixbus is to replicate mixing on a Harrison analog console.

If you are doing EDM or composing virtual symphonies with tons of soft synths or loops, it probably isn't for you.

If you need heavy-duty audio editing with lots of time and/ or pitch correction, it probably isn't for you.

If you are mixing already recorded and edited tracks or recording live instruments by people who can actually play, it is fantastic.

Cool, thanks.  I do actually do a bit of EDM, but that's more of an occasional experimental thing and truth be told SONAR is functional so I can use that for now.  If need be, I can purchase Reaper cheaply enough which is pretty flexible when it comes to recording and  mixing. 
 
Most of what I do is acoustic type covers, with a bit of soft synth drums and maybe piano or keyboard sounds.  A lot of the midi stuff I do is via the piano roll, which is know is available in Mixbus, but I do occasionally use a keyboard to enter MIDI data.  Does Mixbus allow use of MIDI keyboard inputs?
 
Either way, I do like the sound of Mixbus for how it may work for my acoustic stuff and with the price it is currently seems too good to pass up.

Hi Kevin,
I went towards Mixbus because of the price.
Though I did not yet go deeply into it ,to answer your demand concerning midi ins and outs : yes you can ,I mused around with Diva and with the sampled pianos from Digital Sound Factory using Rapture Pro and for sure you can play.
Didn't go into editing ,and for sure,I will have to follow the owner's manual because Mixbus is clearly less intuitive than Sonar in this area.
Also it is quite demanding to the CPU ,but while the latency announced is not good,the practical use of softsynth is quite ok ,no problems if you want to add a synth part to the audio material.
The Gui is appealing to me because I like to have the console view being more important than the track view.
Routing is quite intuitive by the way.
So hope it helps.
Mixbus seems to be usable as a daw but I think you cannot do everything with it.
I actually agree with bdickens and I have the same feelings.
I am also trying a little bit Reaper which seems to be really efficient when it comes to CPU optimisation.
Personnaly ,I will cary on with Sonar,try to learn to get what I can from Mixbus,and I am really looking towards an offer from Magix but not the one concerning Samplitude but ,the Vegas one which is quite appealing,though one hundred here and one hundred and a half there makes a lot of monney spent at the end......
All the best.
Olivier.

Vilovilo
Hi Kevin,
I went towards Mixbus because of the price.
Though I did not yet go deeply into it ,to answer your demand concerning midi ins and outs : yes you can ,I mused around with Diva and with the sampled pianos from Digital Sound Factory using Rapture Pro and for sure you can play.
Didn't go into editing ,and for sure,I will have to follow the owner's manual because Mixbus is clearly less intuitive than Sonar in this area.
Also it is quite demanding to the CPU ,but while the latency announced is not good,the practical use of softsynth is quite ok ,no problems if you want to add a synth part to the audio material.
The Gui is appealing to me because I like to have the console view being more important than the track view.
Routing is quite intuitive by the way.
So hope it helps.
Mixbus seems to be usable as a daw but I think you cannot do everything with it.
I actually agree with bdickens and I have the same feelings.
I am also trying a little bit Reaper which seems to be really efficient when it comes to CPU optimisation.
Personnaly ,I will cary on with Sonar,try to learn to get what I can from Mixbus,and I am really looking towards an offer from Magix but not the one concerning Samplitude but ,the Vegas one which is quite appealing,though one hundred here and one hundred and a half there makes a lot of monney spent at the end......
All the best.
Olivier.

Thanks for that. I've decided I really can't miss this price for Mixbus, having seen the usual price.
 
After that I will put some money aside and either buy Reaper or Studio One Pro if I need to get something else.  I would get Studio One now if I had that level of cash spare, but sadly I don't which is a shame because again the crossgrade price is amazing currently.
 
I was a Studio One free version user before I purchased SONAR and I loved its ease of use. 

It was $29 during Black Friday, and probably will be again before Christmas.
I love Mixbus, but I don't do much with midi.